[Avila] Problem with wds bridging on avila board

[Tim Harvey]

Joel,

I have not heard of anyone porting the GPL driver back to 2.6.15 - it was
originally written for something around 2.6.18 and is only maintained for the
newer kernels.  Its possible to port back but you'll have to take care of the
fact that certain kernel API's (like the mutex stuff you ran into) has changed.
 Personally, if your going to expend that effort, your better off moving your
environment up to a more recent kernel.  Of course, its always a moving target.

If you follow the patches at
http://trac.nslu2-linux.org/kernel/browser/trunk/patches you can patch the
standard linux kernel to support your avila board.  If you run into problems,
you can post to either the NSLU project or here for help from the people here
that have done this (I know of at least two others on this list that have
patched their own kernel up).  I believe there is also at least one VAR that I
know of on this list that will sell you a debian based kernel devel system that
supports the gateworks boards.

With regards to your bridging issue:

Its definitely not the IAL as I do what your doing with both the IAL and the
GPL drivers.  I don't like the IAL personally because its not GPL and therefore
not part of the mainstream kernel, which simply makes it a major pain to update
kernels as you have to port the IAL to the new kernel, but I also do not have
any issues with the IAL driver's performance or functionality.  You can search
this list for numerous discussions about this topic.  I have done a simple
throughput test with both drivers (2.6.15-uc0 + IAL NPE vs 2.6.19 + GPL NPE)
and did not find a significant performance difference.  I 'always' use the
'npe_learning=0' mod param as I've been told that the npe_learning feature has
had memory leaks in the past (never confirmed this myself and am not sure if it
was fixed).

I have experienced an issue with some early 2347 boards where the PHY would not
maintain a 100mbps link with certain phy's of other equipment I was using.  The
2347 uses a phy that is different from all the other IXP based boards I know of
and its not entirely supported in the kernel/driver your using.  I can't say
for sure this is what your seeing (I don't see it with 'newer' boards).  

Can you repeat your issue with 2348's?

Tim

--- Joel Lindsay <joel at waveteq.com> wrote:

> Hi Tim,
> 
> I am using the 2.6.15 kernel, as that is what came with my avila dev kit and
> I haven't upgraded.  Do you know if this will work with the GPL drivers?
> 
> I am using Gateworks 2347 board with atheros and madwifi.
> 
> The thing that struck me as most odd was that the problem only occurred when
> connected to my LAN (with all the associated network and broadcast traffic)
> but it worked perfectly when just straight bridging 2 laptops.  This was
> very similar to what I saw with the intel drivers before using
> npe_learning=0, which is why I thought they might be related.
> 
> Maybe I will need to upgrade my kernel and try out the GPL drivers, or
> possibly the problem is something else.  I have had some ideas from some
> other board users that I will try.
> 
> Thanks for the help!
> 
> Joel
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tim Harvey [mailto:tim_harvey at yahoo.com] 
> Sent: May 13, 2007 8:51 PM
> To: Avila
> Subject: Re: [Avila] Problem with wds bridging on avila board
> 
> Joel,
> 
> What board are you using?  What are you using for WiFi/WDS (Atheros cards w/
> madwifi?).  I assume your setting everything up on the same subnet (bridge)
> vs
> routing?  I do what your talking about all the time both with the IAL and
> GPL
> NPE drivers.
> 
> As for the GPL NPE driver, I've had it working on 2.6.18 and 2.6.19 using
> the
> patches at http://trac.nslu2-linux.org/kernel/browser/trunk/patches.  I
> noticed
> that they no longer have the 2.6.18/19 patches there but you should find
> them
> if you go back in their subversion rev's you'll find them.  I have no reason
> to
> believe the patches they have for 2.6.20/21 would give you any compile
> problems, I just haven't moved to that kernel.  I never had any compile
> issues
> but I could see issues if your trying to put the driver on other kernels -
> there were a few changes that affect the driver between 2.6.18-2.6.21
> 
> Tim
> 
> --- Joel Lindsay <joel at waveteq.com> wrote:
> 
> >  
> > 
> >  
> > 
> > I am seeing a weird problem.  When I create a wds link between 2 avila
> > boards with a laptop connected on both ends, everything works just as
> > expected.  When I take one end and put it on my network, suddenly I can't
> > ping past the board on that network side.  Its like the packets are being
> > dropped, but only when its part of a larger network (switch, then router)
> > 
> >  
> > 
> > It seems very similar to a former problem that was caused by multicast
> > traffic and was solved by setting the argument npe_learning=0 when
> > modprobing the ethernet driver.  This leads me to believe it is again a
> ixp
> > npe problem.
> > 
> >  
> > 
> > I have tried compiling the GPL Ethernet driver to see if this helps, but
> am
> > having no luck as I keep getting mutex errors that I can't seem to make go
> > away.
> > 
> >  
> > 
> > Has anyone seen this problem before?  Anyone know how to fix it?  Is it
> > another npe problem?
> > 
> >  
> > 
> > Any help appreciated.
> > 
> >  
> > 
> > Joel Lindsay
> > 
> > 
> 
> 
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